WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell last week as layoffs remain sparse despite a softening labor market and rising energy costs due to the Iran war.
The number of Americans applying for jobless aid for the week ending March 28 fell by 9,000 to 202,000 from the previous week’s 211,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s fewer than the 212,000 new filings analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting and within the range of the past several years.
Filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
A number of high-profile companies have cut jobs recently, including the software maker Oracle, which according to media reports cut thousands of workers this week.
Others that have recently announced job cuts include Morgan Stanley,Block, UPSand Amazon.
Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered even further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff rollouts, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.
Employers added fewer than 200,000 jobs last year, compared with about 1.5 million in 2024, according to the data firm FactSet.
Last month, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 92,000 jobs in February, a sign that the labor market remains under strain. Revisions also slashed 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls, nudging the unemployment rate up to 4.4%.
The March jobs report is due out Friday.
The surprisingly weak employment picture in February adds to the economic uncertainty over the war with Iran, which has caused oil prices to surge more than 40% and saddled business and consumers with higher costs.
This comes at a time when inflation was already relatively high in the U.S.
The Commerce Department recently reported that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge rose 2.8% in January compared with a year earlier. That’s above the Fed’s 2% target and the latest sign that prices were persistently elevated even before the Iran war caused spikes in oil and gas costs.
That persistent inflation, combined with the uncertainties brought on by the conflict in the Middle East, led the Fed to leave its benchmark lending rate alone at its last meeting and raised doubts that a cut was coming anytime soon.
Central bank officials voted to raise the rate three times to close 2025 out of concern for a weakening job market.
The American labor market appears stuck in what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job.
The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly swings, declined by 3,000 to 207,750.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending March 21 jumped by 25,000 to 1.84 million, the government said.
A now hiring sign sits on the window of a retail clothing store in Garland, Texas, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states Thursday, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to strike its neighbors even as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf states along with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the world’s energy supplies with effects far beyond the Middle East. That has proved to be Iran’s greatest strategic advantage in the war. Britain planned to hold a call with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait once the fighting is over.
Trump has insisted the strait can be taken by force — but said it is not up to the U.S. to do that. In an address to the American people Wednesday night, he encouraged countries that depend on oil from Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”
Before the U.S. and Israel started the war on Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran, the waterway was open to traffic and 20% of all traded oil used passed through it.
Iran responded defiantly to Trump’s speech, in which the American president claimed U.S. military action had been so decisive that “one of the most powerful countries” is “really no longer a threat.”
A spokesman for Iran’s military, Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, insisted Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities. He said facilities targeted so far by U.S. strikes are “insignificant.”
Just before Trump began his address — in which he said U.S. “core strategic objectives are nearing completion” — explosions were heard in Dubai as air defenses worked to intercept an Iranian missile barrage.
Less than a half-hour after the president was done, Israel said its military was also working to intercept incoming missiles. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, immediately after the speech.
Attacks continued across Iran on Thursday, with strikes reported in multiple cities.
In Lebanon — home to Iran-backed Hezbollah militants who are fighting Israel, which has launched a ground invasion — an Israeli strike killed four people in the south, the Health Ministry said.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.
More than 1,200 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.
Iranian attacks on about two dozen commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.
Since March 1, traffic through the strait has dropped 94% over the same period last year, according to the Lloyds List Intelligence shipping data firm. Two ships are confirmed to have paid a fee, the firm said, while others were allowed through based on agreements with their home governments.
In order to bypass Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has been piping more oil to a Red Sea port, and Iraq said Thursday that it had started to truck oil across Syria to the Mediterranean.
The 35 countries speaking Thursday, including all G7 industrialized democracies except the U.S., as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait.
Thursday’s talks were focused on political and diplomatic measures, but British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said military planners from an unspecified number of countries will also plot ways to ensure security once fighting ends, including potential mine-clearing work and “reassurance” for commercial shipping.
No country appears willing to try to open the strait by force while the war is raging. French President Emmanuel Macron, while on a visit to South Korea, called a military operation to secure the waterway “unrealistic.”
But there is a concern that Iran might limit traffic through the waterway even after U.S. and Israeli attacks on it cease.
The idea of an international effort has echoes of the “coalition of the willing,” led by the U.K. and France, that was assembled to underpin Ukraine’s security in the event of a ceasefire in that war. The coalition is, in part, an attempt to demonstrate to Washington that Europe is doing more for its own security in the face of frequent criticism from Trump.
The conflict is driving up prices for oil and natural gas, roiling stock markets, pushing up the cost of gasoline and threatening to make a range of goods, including food, more expensive.
On Thursday, Brent crude, the international standard, rose again and was at $108 in spot trading, up about 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war.
Though the oil and gas that typically transits the strait is primarily sold to Asian nations, Japan and South Korea were the only two countries from the region joining Thursday's call about the strait. The supply of jet fuel has also been interrupted by the conflict, with consequences for travel worldwide.
Weissert reported from Washington and Rising from Bangkok. Associated Press writer David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this story.
Mourners gather during a funeral procession for Alireza Tangsiri, head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, and others killed in Israeli strikes in late March, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A firefighter extinguishes a car at the site of Israeli airstrikes, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People take cover in a bomb shelter as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Bnei Brak, Israel, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
The Indian flagged LPG carrier Jag Vasant transporting liquefied petroleum gas, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai, India, after it arrived clearing the Strait of Hormuz, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump walks from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
